A Long Way Home
Saroo Brierley, 2013 (2014, int'l.)
Penguin Publishers
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425276198
Summary
The miraculous and triumphant story of Saroo Brierley, a young man who used Google Earth to rediscover his childhood life and home in an incredible journey from India to Australia and back again
At only five years old, Saroo Brierley got lost on a train in India. Unable to read or write or recall the name of his hometown or even his own last name, he survived alone for weeks on the rough streets of Calcutta before ultimately being transferred to an agency and adopted by a couple in Australia.
Despite his gratitude, Brierley always wondered about his origins. Eventually, with the advent of Google Earth, he had the opportunity to look for the needle in a haystack he once called home, and pore over satellite images for landmarks he might recognize or mathematical equations that might further narrow down the labyrinthine map of India. One day, after years of searching, he miraculously found what he was looking for and set off to find his family.
A Long Way Home is a moving, poignant, and inspirational true story of survival and triumph against incredible odds. It celebrates the importance of never letting go of what drives the human spirit: hope. (From the publisher.)
The 2016 film version, Lion, stars Nicole Kidman, Dev Patel, and Rooney Mara. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Dev Patel for Best Supporting Actor.
Author Bio
• Birth—1981
• Where—Ganesh Talai, Madhya Pradesh, India
• Raised—Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
• Education—Australian International Hotel School (Canberra)
• Currently—lives in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Saroo Brierley is an Indian-born Australian businessman and memorist. At age 5, Saroo was separated from his biological mother and eventually adopted by an Australian couple. Twenty-five years later, he reunited with his biological mother.
His autobiographical account, A Long Way Home, was published in 2013 in Australia and internationally a year later. It generated significant international media attention and was adapted to film in 2016. The film, entitled Lion, stars Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, and Rooney Mara. It received six Oscar nominations, including one for Dev Patel for Best Supporting Actor.
Background
Saroo Brierley was born Sheru Munshi Khan in Ganesh Talai, a suburb within Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh. When he was young, his father left his mother, throwing the family into poverty. His mother worked in construction to support herself and her children but often made too little money to feed them all. Nor could she afford to send them to school.
At age 5, Saroo and his older brothers Guddu and Kallu began begging at the railway station for food and money. Guddu sometimes obtained work sweeping the floors of train carriages. One evening, Guddu said he was going to ride the train from Khandwa to the city of Burhanpur, 70 kilometres (43 mi) to the south. Saroo asked to go along, and Guddu agreed. By the time the train reached Burhanpur, Saroo was so tired he collapsed onto a seat on the platform. Guddu told him to wait, promising to be back shortly.
Guddu did not return, however, and Saroo eventually became impatient. He noticed a train parked in the station and, thinking his brother was on it, boarded an empty carriage. He found there were no doors to the adjoining carriages. Hoping his brother would come for him, he fell asleep.
When he awoke, the train was travelling across unfamiliar country. Many hours passed, and although the train occasionally stopped at small stations, Saroo was unable to open the door to escape. The rail journey finally ended at the huge Howrah railway station in Kolkata (then Calcutta), nearly 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) from his home. When someone opened the door to his carriage, Saroo fled, having no idea where he was.
He survived by scavenging scraps of food in the street and sleeping underneath the station's seats. Finally, he ventured out into the city, and after days of homelessness on Kolkata's streets, a teenager took him to a police station and reported that the boy was probably lost. Eventually, he was moved to the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption (ISSA). The staff there attempted to locate his family, but Saroo did not know enough for them to trace his hometown. He was officially declared a lost child and subsequently adopted by the Brierley family of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
His mother
In the meantime, his mother, Kamla Munshi, searched for her two sons. A few weeks after her sons failed to return home, police informed her that Guddu's body had been found near the railway tracks, a kilometre (0.6 miles) from Burhanpur station. He had been struck by a train. She then confined her energy to looking for Saroo, travelling to different places on trains and visiting a temple every week to pray for his return.
Search for his family
Saroo grew up in Hobart with his Australian parents, who later adopted another Indian boy, Mantosh. Saroo learned English and soon forgot Hindi. He studied business and hospitality at the Australian International Hotel School in Canberra.
As an adult, he spent many hours over many months conducting searches using the satellite images on Google Earth, painstakingly following railway lines radiating out from Howrah railway station. He relied on his vague memories of the main features around Burhanpur railway station although he knew little of the name of the station except that it began with the letter B.
Late one night in 2011, he came upon a small railway station that closely matched his childhood recollection of where he had become trapped in an empty carriage; the name of this station was Burhanpur, very close to a phonetic spelling of the name he remembered from his childhood. He followed the satellite images of the railway line north and found the town of Khandwa. He had no recollection of the name, but the town contained recognizable features, including a fountain near the train tracks where he used to play. He was able to trace a path through the streets to what appeared to be the place where he and his family had lived.
Following up on a lead, Saroo contacted a Facebook group based in Khandwa. The Facebook group reinforced his belief that Khandwa might be his hometown.
In 2012, Saroo travelled to Khandwa in India and asked residents if they knew of any family that had lost a son 25 years ago. He showed photographs of himself as a child in Hobart. Local people soon led him to his mother. There he learned that his brother Guddu had been killed the very day that Saroo had fallen asleep on the train waiting for him.
Sarro was also reunited with his sister Shekila and his surviving brother Kallu, who were now a schoolteacher and factory manager, respectively. With Saroo and Guddu gone, their mother was able to afford to send them to school. The reunion was extensively covered by Indian and international media.
Today
Saroo continues to live in Hobart. He and his Indian family are now able to communicate regularly, taking advantage of a computer at the home of one of Kallu's neighbors. He bought his mother a house so she no longer has to work.
Saroo has returned to India and visited his family over a dozen times. He also traveled first class on the Kolkata Mail, a train service from Mumbai to Kolkata, to re-trace his journey of a quarter century earlier. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/17/2017.)
Book Reviews
Amazing stuff.
New York Post
So incredible that sometimes it reads like a work of fiction.
Winnipeg Free Press (Canada)
A remarkable story.
Sydney Morning Herald Review (Australia)
I literally could not put this book down…[Saroo's] return journey will leave you weeping with joy and the strength of the human spirit.
Manly Daily (Australia)
We urge you to step behind the headlines and have a read of this absorbing account.… With clear recollections and good old-fashioned storytelling, Saroo…recalls the fear of being lost and the anguish of separation.
Weekly Review (Australia)
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available by the publisher; in the meantime, consider our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for A Long Way Home…then take off on your own:
1. What propels Saroo Brierley as an adult to search for his birth home, especially as he writes, "I am not Indian…and I have family bonds [in Australia] that cannot be broken (p. 252)? If that is the case, why the drive to find his Indian roots?
2. What role does memory play in shaping our self-identity? What are the memories Saroo has of his early childhood, and how have those memories, many of them traumatized, shaped Saroo's sense of himself? How did Saroo continue to "work" his mind in order to keep his childhood memories alive for 25 years?
3. Discuss Saroo's ordeal on the streets of Kolkata. Also, what about the railway worker who took him in for a time. Why does Saroo run away from the man's seeming kindness?
4. Talk about the genuine kindness of other people Saroo encounters in Kolkata: the ISSA orphanage and Mrs. Saroj Sood, in particular.
5. Describe Sue and John Brierley as parents and the kind of family they provided for Saroo and his brother Mantosh. What were Sue's experiences in her early years? To what degree did her background as a refugee influence her desire to adopt two Indian children?
6. What are some of the darker aspects of this book surrounding poverty. Consider this passage from the book:
Today there are perhaps a hundred thousand homeless kids in Kolkata, and a good many of them die before they reach adulthood.… No one knows how many Indian children have been trafficked into the sex trade, or slavery, or even for organs, but all these trades are thriving, with too few officials and too many kids..
7. Talk about Kamala as a single mother and her struggles to keep her family fed. Is her experience typical of Indian village women? Also, consider her insistence on remaining in the same home in hopes that her son might someday return to her. What does that suggest about the kind of woman Kamala is and the strength of her optimism and her faith?
8. Discuss Saroo's use of technology to locate his family—Facebook and Google Earth, in particular. Would this story have had a different outcome absent the internet?
9. What was your experience reading A Long Way Home? Did you find it one-dimensional, too focused on Saroo's experiences? Or did you find that the story captured the multiple experiences of Saroo and his two families? Was the story engaging, suspenseful, heart-rending? Was there one part of the story you found more interesting than the other: the story of Saroo as a lost child in Kolkata...or the story of his five-year-long search for his birth family.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)